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After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Mourdock Blames Loss on ‘Liberal Media’

If you’re trying to raise money from wingnuts, one good strategy is always to attack the “liberal media” and blame them for everything. Richard Mourdock, the losing Senate candidate who made some monumentally stupid statements about rape and cost himself the race, is sending out fundraising emails doing exactly that:

“After a bitter, hard-fought campaign, many Republicans all over the country were forced to accept defeat rather than celebrate victory. In our case, we found our campaign caught in the liberal media crosshairs. Never has Indiana seen a more obvious example of media bias by reporters more interested in defeating conservatives than reporting the news,” Mourdock Finance Director Ashlee Walls writes in a fundraising plea to supporters.

“We fought back and invested heavily in a last-minute push to combat the slew of false accusations Democrats and the liberal media churned up to distract voters.”

Yes, it’s all the media’s fault. If they hadn’t reported that he said something incredibly stupid and offensive, he would have won. It has nothing to do with the fact that he said those things, only that reporters — get this — reported that he did. A classic five year old’s response to getting caught.

Comments

I’d believe that the media focuses inordinately on candidates’ goofs and idiocies over their more mundane statements. But the media does that for both sides. Sensationalism is the name of the game. Any politician who doesn’t know that doesn’t deserve to be in office.

If Democrats are lucky, this guy actually believes what he’s spouting. If he does, he’ll lose the next election too. If they are unlucky, he’s just using ‘damn the librul media’ as a fundraising meme, because its a popular conservative scapegoat.

steve84: You are entirely correct. They pretend to be all about personal responsibility.

I will note, though, that this is not just a Republican failing (though the Repubs make more noise about it). I am always startled when I meet well-educated, fully grown adults who are clinically unable to accept blame for their own failings. Anytime something goes wrong, they have to find a way to focus on what other people did, and how it made the situation bad.

I know a guy who will clamp down like a pitbull and go on and on and on about how wronged he was when anyone else makes a mistake. But if you point out something where he created a problem, suddenly he’s all in a hurry to move past that point and get on with talking about something “more productive.”

This is just a fundraising e-mail and so should probably not be taken too seriously, but nevertheless I think it is indicative of why the Republican party is in trouble. (Note that there is a difference between “Why the GOP is wrong” and “Why the GOP is losing winnable elections” — the two sometimes overlap, and sometimes do not) Mourdock lost because he said something monumentally stupid. People who otherwise support Mourdock’s politics should be furious with him for screwing the pooch. The more they blame the “liberal media” for it, the less opportunity they have to actually address the problem, and the more they will begin to lose elections they might otherwise have won (even with their shitty policies).

“We fought back and invested heavily in a last-minute push to combat the slew of false accusations Democrats and the liberal media churned up to distract voters.”

“Unfortunately our investment was a poor one, because it was the slew of TRUE accusations Democrats and the liberal media churned up that was actually killing us – starting with ‘the candidate is a moron’.”